WASHINGTON – Attorney-General William Barr, who U.S. President Donald Trump appointed himself, said he’s yet to see evidence of widespread voter fraud, throwing a major drawback on Trump’s bid to reverse the result of the recent election.
In an interview with Associated Press (AP) on December 1, Barr said the U.S. Justice Department is yet to uncover proof to support voter fraud claims. Trump’s camp refutes last month’s election results, aiming to block President-elect Joe Biden from assuming duties in the White House.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.
Barr’s statement is notable as he has been a fervent Trump ally. In fact, Trump nominated him to lead the Justice Department in 2018. Barr replaced former Attorney-General and Republican Senator Jeff Sessions.
This isn’t Barr’s first time to hold such a position – he also earlier served as Attorney-General under President George H. W. Bush.
Besides his appointment, Barr’s statement also comes as a surprise as he previously raised the issue that mail-in voting could be susceptible to fraud amid the coronavirus crisis.
Trump’s Legal Team Fires Back
Trump’s camp was quick to counter Barr’s comments about voter fraud claims.
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,” Trump’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, said in a written statement on December 1.
“We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined … Again, with the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,” the Trump attorneys added.
Barr and Trump’s Contentious Meeting
After Barr’s interview with AP, the Attorney General met with Trump in the West Wing the first week of December. The lengthy meeting was “contentious,” as per an insider who spoke to CNN.
When asked by the media on December 3 whether he had confidence in Barr, Trump’s answer wasn’t clear-cut., “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now,” he said. “They should be looking at all of this fraud.”
A week before the poll, Barr released a two-page memo that authorized federal prosecutors to pursue complaints of voting breaches before states moved to certify the election results. The memo came just as Trump’s camp was disputing Biden’s victory.
Barr’s move earned rebukes left and right, including reproach from inside the department. It even prompted the Justice Department’s top election crimes prosecutor Richard Pilger to resign last month.
In an email, Pilger told colleagues that Barr’s order was “an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.”
Pilger attached the memo with his resignation letter addressed to his colleagues.
Trump’s campaign team alleges a widespread plot, claiming that Democrats dumped millions of illegal votes into the system. The team has filed lawsuits in some states, saying that poll watchers didn’t have a clear enough view. The claims suggested that something illegal might have happened during the poll. But Republican judges have dismissed the claims and said the cases lacked enough evidence.
